Saturday, July 23, 2016

What if ? funny and intelligent answers to scientific questions

Well
written, funny, and a nice chapter-at-a-time book to have handy when idle time
unexpectedly arrives.

What if?
What if someone was capable of answering all of the questions you asked as a
child? Would it be satisfying? This is a book that answers various of the
exciting scientific and engineering questions that are discussed in pubs, dorm
rooms, and online.

Randall
Munroe takes a lot of these "what if" questions and answers them in a
transparent and well-reasoned manner which shows knowledge and humour. and
better than that, he takes these astonishing questions and extends the ideas to
improbable extents. Working at the limits shows some interesting consequences
especially explosive ones.

I love
science. As a novelist and not a very rational person I find books like 'What
if?' to be enlightening and pleasant practices in both imagination and science.
Some of our biggest advances come from asking off the wall questions that have
no relevance in daily life. Some day one of the questions in this book might
open someone's mind to a new possibility in a completely unrelated field.

That
is the joy and reward of speculation. Beyond the science, the writing is just
plain fun. I laughed my way through the first half of the book.